The Confiscate Evidence skill from the Magical Law tree is completely overpowered.Observe: You can clear out each and every shop as long as you leave one item behind (to reset Brax to the carpet). You're stealing from outside the shop so no risk whatsoever. The items reset when you go down a level, so you can sell them to the next Brax, steal them and everything else back, and repeat. Thoughts?
In general, shop code has been overdue for an update. There's so many easy ways to steal from Brax, I'm beginning to feel guilty for it. I don't care that Brax is a demon, I'm fond of him. His prices don't seem that outlandish to me even on harder difficulties.and being able to hide in his shop to heal has saved my skin more than once. I like to think he's a good guy despite his brutal enforcement agents and shady underworld connections. Can't judge a book by its cover. Yeah, I'll probably only be using this skill only for yoinking island artifacts.
Am I missing something? How is this different from any teleport skill? For example, with burglary, you can do the exact same thing (take everything into inventory and replace a single item to get Brax to move) and teleport to a staircase to go down a level. As long as you don't take a step (just repeatedly teleport) the Collectors aren't triggered. Is it a time reduction thing?
It has to do with the devs intentions. Yes, clearly there is an intention that it be possible to steal from Brax. The question is, should it be possible to steal from him without triggering the collectors, other than using "5 Finger Discount" (which has the explicit purpose of allowing you to 'steal' one random item that's not actually on the store shelves). My guess, and a dev will have to correct me if I'm wrong about this, the intention is that leaving the shop with an unpaid for shop item is SUPPOSED to trigger the dread collectors, so that any skill that allows you to do so (other than the one I mentioned) is not operating as intended in this respect. Personally, I don't call that an exploit since, at least for me, exploits only are exploits if you are actually gaining an unfair advantage over other people, and that is impossible in a single-player game. BUT at the same time, anything that cheapens the game mechanics by enabling players to bypass them at will, also cheapens the experience for those who take advantage of that, so my personal solution is to pretend that such means of bypassing intended mechanics don't exist. So I resist the urge to take advantage of any mechanic that I feel makes any portion of the game too easy. But that's a personal choice. It's the same way I felt in the early days of the Archaeology skill --- I never took it because I felt that it removed a lot of the necessary risk out of the game.
Well, many skiills allow you to steal from brax, some easier, some harder, but I am starting to think devs want us to abuse those skills because it has been ages since they did anything about it..
I'm more inclined to think it's because it'd require a lot of work to overhaul the shop code, and without some thorough testing they could easily break the game. If you think about how much manpower they have versus what people might want, it almost makes more sense to use that time to make more features or new games than to fix exploits only clever clogs can take advantage of. That said, Confiscate Evidence and the Pocket Dimension trick does indeed make it too easy, since unlike the digging ray you can do both almost right away.
Honestly, what was intended is not as important as is what way of playing makes the game better. Intentions have little to do with it. If it makes the game better to NOT do something, then don't do it. I know that's a tough concept for people with little self-control, but that's what I suggest. And intentions-be-damned.
Sorry to get all philosophical, but I think here-and-now temptation versus compromising one's own sense of integrity is a running theme in the struggle of humanity in general. Self-control is really about one's ability to resist temptation long enough to be able to weigh the choice about whether to violate the spirit of the game's rules (i.e. stealing from Brax should result in his attempting retribution) for the sake of a particular run. ... Either that or Brax really IS a hero like you, there to supply you against Dredmor, and only sics Dread Collectors on you if your theft is obvious so as to maintain his credibility among other demons.
